Draft of a paper presented at the Midwest Popular Culture Association,
Pittsburgh, PA, October 7-9, 1994. The author's email address is
cherny@csli.stanford.edu. All rights reserved.

"Objectifying" the Body in the Discourse of an Object-Oriented MUD

Lynn ChernyStanford University

The position of the ``body" in cyberspace is problematic.
Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto paved the way for a discussion of
the identity issues at stake in a technological frame of reference.
``Clean distinctions between the organism and the machine''
are breaking down in our information age, and new creatures are
forming that beg new theories rather than recycling of old ones
(Haraway 1989).
Virtual reality technology poses particularly obvious challenges
to a politics of identity.
Walser (1990), discussing immersive virtual reality, says, ``Whereas film
is used to show a reality to an audience, cyberspace is used to
give a virtual body, and a role, to everyone in the audience.
Print and radio tell; stage and film show; cyberspace embodies.''
Hayles (1993) theorizes ways in which conception of the physical changes
given an immersion virtual reality setting: bodies becomes patterns of information,
``flickering signifiers, characterized by their tendency toward
unexpected metamorphoses, attenuations, and dispersions'' (Hayles 1993:
76).

Stone (1993) discusses the blurring between the body and computer
prosthesis that can occur: the technology we use to communicate with can
become an integral part of us, and the body, when not there physically,
is still there as a social construct. Bodies, in a virtual space,
can be created with a bit of programming:
gender can be switched, skin color can be forgotten temporarily, age or
infirmity can be escaped.

In purely text-based virtual realities, however,
the conceptualization of the physical is perhaps more complex, since
there is no echo of real physical movement, sound, or shape involved.
Yet, text-based virtual reality seems to offer as many challenges
to notions of identity and definitions of body as immersion virtual reality does.

For the past 9 months I have been analyzing conversation
in a MUD, or multi-user dimension, accessible over Internet.
The site I have been participating
in is JaysHouseMOO (JHM), a place where people hang out and discuss networking,
mud programming, and virtual reality. [Footnote: A MOO is an object-oriented
MUD, named after the programming language it uses.]
In this paper I discuss the discourse creation of problematic
bodies in JHM.
Because the community at JHM is very closely tied to that at LambdaMOO (LM),
and LambdaMOO has a slightly different programming culture,
I also present some examples from LambdaMOO in the text that follows.

First, a brief introduction to MOO conversation.
All interaction in the MOO occurs in text. Each user has a character
with a name and a description that serves as the reflection of herself
in the MOO environment. This character can converse synchronously
with the other characters in the MOO.

Conversation in most muds consists of two types of utterance:
the say command and the emote.
A say command produces an
utterance issuing from the character which every character in the same
MOO room sees: lynn says, "hi." An emote produces an action similarly
seen by everyone in the same room:
lynn sits down for a rest. In this way, the body can be evoked with
suggestions of physical actions, even though text is the sole
channel of communication.

In a MOO, which is an object-oriented MUD, all characters are technically
objects, as well as all scenery and all props.
The simultaneous identification and distinction between the real
person and the character object are a complex matter. I will only be
looking at a small corner of this problem, with some examples
of behaviors that enforce the differences and the similarities between
the two.

A. R. Stone reports that phone sex
workers, who are working in another virtual medium, conjure their
bodies by hints and suggestions in the
space that the phone connection create: they report ironically that
after encoding and decoding of sound bytes happens, they all
look white, 5'4'', and have red hair (Stone, 1991: 105).
At least one of my informants reports that
he feels more ``embodied'' in the MOO than when talking on the phone,
despite the lack of even the vocal channel.
This sense of embodiment is an entirely constructed feeling,
coming largely
from the conscious use of physical ``actions'' during conversations,
like backchannels: lynn nods,lynn smiles.

An excellent and compelling example of the complexity of the
relationship that holds between a character and a user is illustrated
below. People greeted Karen when she entered the room,
as usual, only to find out to their surprise that this time she hadn't
entered the room under her own volition:

ls had been talking to his wife Karen over their portable phones,
and had told her about his conversation with their friends;
she asked him to move her character for her.
ls's statement to Karen's character in line 4 sums up the confusing
split reality
shared by user and character: I walked you (the character) here
(the virtual room) at your (the user's) request since you're (the user)
in the car (in real life). Karen can be in two places at
once with her character, and can ``hang out'' even when she isn't
at her desk looking at the conversation as it happens. She can
read it later, since it will all be in her ``scrollback'' in her
MOO window. The unusual explicitness of the difference between Karen
as user hanging out with friends via her character interface and
Karen's character hanging out without her at the terminal ``behind it''
was disturbing to the witnesses of the event, however.
As Stone (1991) says, ``In virtual systems, an interface
is that which mediates between the human body (or bodies) and an
associated `I' (or `I's'). This double view of `where' the
`person' is, and the corresponding trouble it may cause with
thinking about `who' we are talking about when we discuss
such a problematic `person,' underlies the structure of most
recent virtual communities'' (Stone 1991:87).

I will take the notion of the character as prosthesis as a given
and move on to more complex examples of objectification
during interactions in the MOO. The point to be gotten from
the above is that it is out of the ordinary to refer to the
character as distinct from the user. It creates a break in
the usual understood state of affairs: that the user is the
character, for purposes of isolating agency.

In the discourses on JHM, a speech act called the ``null emote''
plays a large role in
the mutability of the character signifier: the character can become
identified with
other objects, locations, people, or even processes or events.
Null emoting also provides an excellent example of the jointly
constructed nature of discourses in the MOO - an audience can
seize someone's remark and turn it into the first part of a joke,
entirely rewriting the speech event.

In the most straightforward examples of null emoting,
another character answers a question with
his character name on a line alone, e.g., as Tom did
in the first example below, implying that the character is the answer
to the question.

** what
Lenny says, "what's weird?"
Tom
** why
Ted explains to Woodkey why DSM sucks.
Ray
** who
You say, "who's Will Couch?"
Tom
Tom er
** where
Shelley needs to find out where Tanya should deposit her tomorrow night.
George
** how long
Rob says, "how fuckung long does it take 1.1.45 ro compile on a 386/40"
Xythian

Null emotes seem to be appropriate in most question contexts:
who, what, where, why, how. [Footnote: I don't have many examples of ``how''
null emotes, but one character's automation of his null emote
responses
is triggered by ``how'' and ``wonders how'' said in the environment
around him (indicating that he considered it a fine context for
a null emote).]

The null emote phenomenon, however, is fairly complex semantically.
Null emotes also occur in the context of an embedded
question or an indefinite or a plural:

** embedded question
lynn wonders what she came here for.
Shelley
** indefinite pronoun
George pssst, "I think Penfold has something hanging from his nose."
Shelley
** plural
Tom says, "i was trying to think of behaviors you could disallow
programmatically without just removing programmer bits from everybody"
Ray
** indefinite
Honda | There is an open ballot on which you have not yet voted:
Penfold
** indefinite
Ralph says, "gameboy??"
Largo

In semantic terms, the null emote seems to function as an assignment
of a value to an available argument position, i.e., an individual that could
satisfy the predicate denoted by the indefinite or plural (``satisfy''
in a playful, nonrealistic sense, clearly).
This analysis is supported by a rarer form of
null emoting, in which it seems as if a character is intended to
control either a subject position or an adjective's argument position.

The adjective and the participial phrase semantically represent
one-place predicates of individuals, thus allowing a similar binding
of their argument position (loosely speaking, they are missing
something, and the character name provides it).

Interestingly, textual adjacency is needed for a null emote to
feel ``successful.'' The ``presentation'' of the speech act
apparently matters a lot. Line 2 prevented a good null emote
opportunity below:

1 Kit [to Henry]: so what do you operate?
2 Jon says, "It was all that rain talk"
3 Largo hehs.
4 Largo [to Jon]: You spoiled the most purest of null emote
opportunities for that. I hope you're satisifed.

Other cases are group participation events, where either multiple
responses seem to be appropriate, or a null emote is actually
expected. Tom pokes Penfold in the second example because he expected
an emote and didn't receive it immediately. [Footnote: The vertical bar,
or pipe, in lines 1, 4, and
1 indicate that Tom is quoting from another text source, like email.
The representation in line 4 of the second example indicates a
thought bubble.]

1 Tom | Two members of your company are invited to attend at no cost.
2 Ray
3 Patrick
4 Tom | If you would like additional members of your company to
participate, the cost will be $200 per person. Non-Forum members
may attend for $500 per person.
5 lynn
1 Tom | 1. Good interactive stories emerge from:
2 Tom pokes Penfold.
3 Penfold
4 Tom . o O ( whew )
5 lynn says, "Blatant NULL-EMOTE prompts"

Historically, null emoting evolved out of a group participation
act called a ``roll call.'' In a roll call, a character calls
a roll call in capital letters, and the characters present who feel they
fit the subject or attribute in the name of the roll call answer with
their names on a line alone (the virtual equivalent of raising
hands, perhaps):

The null emote speech event is one clear way in which the audience
participates in defining and changing the speech context, and it
illustrates how characters can briefly alter their own character's
signification,
to fit them into the conversation under different temporary
identities (cf. the discussion of text and audience in Brenneis 1986).

Interestingly, the habits of cyber discourse can become real life discourse
habits as well. And more intriguingly, they can undergo physical
translations: the null emote survives among some MOOers
in real life,
translated as a physical gesture (like a slight hand-raise) during
conversations or while listening to talks or television. Notably
it survives for them as a physical,
bodily involvement in a discourse, suggesting the body is
involved in identity for them. Among a few other MOOers,
null emoting in real life consists of the mention of a name, however.
(JHM community members tell stories about almost or actually
null emoting in real life during conversations with non-MUDders,
who of course have no idea what this behavior means.)

In Xythian-completion, aka ``x-completion,'' the character replaces
a noun or sometimes another part of speech in a sentence or phrase.

The wall twists and groans as it tries to force itself into the
shape of Khaki_Guest. With a crack it snaps back into shape.
Ray snaps back into shape.
1 Conner nods. i know. was wondering what this license thing entailed, then.
2 Patrick
3 Border says, "not necessarily v.32, etc"
4 Conner says, "hm."
5 v.Patrick

A subsort of Xythian-completion that occurs frequently consists of
the embedding of a character name in punctuation, especially odd
punctuation. According to one informant, this was the probable
origin of Xythian-completion; it was intended to draw attention to
odd typographic entities, and has since become generalized to include
name subsitutions elsewhere (there is some disagreement among
the population about the historical evolution, however).

Finally, a rarer form of completion results when some character
evokes something unspoken in the context and substitutes her name
into it, as in line 6 below. The number for film listings is 777-FILM,
which is what fungus is completing into.

1 fungus [to Brett]: hey. yr alive. what time would you want to go?
2 Brett [to fungus]: late
3 fungus [to Brett]: i.e., do you have a paper, can you tell times?
4 Brett [to fungus]: no, but i can call the theatre, hang
5 Brett says, "oit is buusy"
6 777-FUNGUS

Against this backdrop of multiple-participant discourse construction
and metamorphosis of identity, a greeting ritual evolved between the characters
Ken (who is also the character Xythian) and Karen. When Ken enters
a room, Karen says the first part of
a word ending in ``ken'' and then Ken null emotes to complete it:

Karen says, "forsa"
ken

An amusing ruckus occured one day when it was discovered that Ken had
automated his completions of ken-words. Reactions to this varied
from startlement to disbelief to amusement:

Of course people were amused at his audacity. In line 9, Karen
says she is giggling in real life, creating a distinction between
her pretense of outrage in the MOO and her reaction of amusement in real
life. To mitigate their reactions, Ken explains his
own worries about automating the action, having to do with mistrusting his
own code's accuracy and coverage:

1 Ken says, "I worked long and hard to get that completer right."
2 Shelley actually found that verb some time ago, but don't tell ken
3 lynn [to Ken]: no, it's ok, you just didn't suffer as long as I thought.
4 Ken says, "I ddi!"
5 Ken says, "I had to watch for days to make sure I had all the completes!"
6 Ken says, "And then be paranoid!"
7 Karen [to Ken]: you don't have them allHAHAHAHA
8 Karen says, "why paranoid?"
9 Ken says, "Can you IMAGINE the STRESS of NOT BEING SURE if I had
a complete."
10 Tom
11 Ken says, "Someone makes one, I am unsure. I complete and then IT
completes and I look silly!"
12 Karen giggles.
13 lynn [to Ken]: ok, that makes me feel better.
14 Karen has seen a couple of doubles and really wondered
15 Ken says, "or WORSE, I MISS THE COMPLETE and FALL DOWN on my MORAL
OBLIGATION as a KEN to complete."

Finally, Ken responsed to my surprise, drawing the line
between human and character object explicitly; he focuses on
the character itself as a location for agency, in a surprising
attempt at comfort:

16 Ken [to lynn]: You could look at it this way: It was the ken character that
did compeltions. That never changed. The ken CHARACTER still completes.

Other automation appears in the MOOs, although usually not as confusingly
as the custom-Ken-completion code. The character r'm has code
that automatically moves him out of crowded rooms once they get too
``loud''; he also has code that automatically null emotes for him if
he hears certain question words.

Other sorts of minor automation on LambdaMOO include
idle twitches, which look initially as if said by a person, but are
actually just triggered by mentions of the character's name in its vicinity
while it is idle. E.g.:

lynn [to Jay]: so when you come back, I have a question...
Jay lies, ``I'm awake, I'm awake!''

An amusing example of code that functions even when a player is not
connected is illustrated below, sent to me by one of the participants.
Joe has a bit of code that removes people from his room when he
is not connected, by first trying to move them through the door,
and if it's locked, ejecting them. In the example below, Jay was
ejected to his home, where his idle twitch then went off. The user
saw this exchange in his scrollback later.
(From the point where ``Joe stirs'', all activity was automated.)

Some users have special verbs [Footnote: MOO programs.] on their characters
that allow other people to ``do'' things to them, producing amusing output;
this sort of code is considered ``human toy'' code.
Joe, for instance, has a ``throw'' verb on himself which allows people
to throw him around, and generates a random exclamation from Joe.
(The text after > is what I typed at my prompt in the MOO.)

>throw joe at bed
You throw Joe at an old-fashioned bed. Joe is now slumped over an
old-fashioned bed.
Joe says, "Ooch!"

The character Dave on JHM produces nonsense utterances when ``poked''
or ``kicked''; some of those utterances actually orginated on
LambdaMOO, recorded by the Cockatoo bird object in the living room (which
babbles things it has heard LM characters saying in the living room).
Dave simulates bird-behavior in response to being poked (line 2 below), and
then spouts messages recorded by the Cockatoo, shipped to JHM by
network link (lines 3 and 6). This example was gotten while Dave was idle.

1 >poke dave
2 Dave shifts about on his perch and bobs his head.
3 Dave squawks, ``BRB - gotta help out somewhere else''
4 >kick dave
5 lynn kicks Dave.
6 Dave babbles, ``long time Listen, Purple, Dharma is away from
his keypad right now, I guess. you hold tight and work on that
beer; I be right back!''

In a rather extreme example of cyborg metamorphosis, the character
Tari turned herself into a Human
Appliance while she was programming a washing machine object for JHM.
In line 3, Berke activates her, and she continues to interact normally
while meanwhile her code generates output messages appropriate to a washer
working. (At least one character complained about her being able
to function simultaneously as a character and as a washing machine,
however.)

1 Berke says, ``Hey, are you a washing machine?''
2 Tari says, ``no...i was messing with the washing machine adn
copied the verbs that worked to myself so i wouldn't have to
start over if i screwed up.''
[later]
3 Berke hands Tari four quarters and a pile of dirty clothes, and
presses the button on Tari's left shoulder.
4 You hear Tari fill with water.
5 Berke hee
6 Karen hehs.
7 Tari giggles.
8 Tari makes a clunking sound.
9 Tari begins to jump around the room, agitating the clothes.
10 Berke lol
11 Tari will take it off soon.
12 Tari stops and you hear water draining.
13 You notice that Tari is beginning the rinse cycle.
14 Berke [to Tari]: So add an `unplug tari' verb which will shut the
washing machine off.
15 Tari goes silent for a moment, then suddenly begins to spin round
and round, water spraying everywhere.
16 Tari [to Berke]: yeah...i'm just waiting to have someone jump me
about turning myself into a toy.
17 *PING*
18 Tari drops a pile of clean, wet clothes. You have a feeling she's
kept at least one sock, though.

Note that she has some uncertainty about whether she has crossed into
a territory that isn't acceptable for the occupants of JHM. There
are limits to the transformations the body can undergo, metaphors
that are considered too bizarre to be comfortable anymore.

Humor often depends on
objectifying characters or, indeed, on anthropomorphizing other objects
in the MOO. One day's play revolved around attacking the
trees in the park, in response to a ``spoof'' from me in line
5. [Footnote: A spoof is a message that does not appear as a normal
utterance from a character; this type names the author after a dash at
the end. Almost all of the interaction with the trees was produced with the
set of ``antisocial commands'' on JHM that produce stock text phrases;
the commands constitute a record of many community in-jokes.]

1 Jon stands up from the tree stump.
2 Jon [to the trees]: Come to Perkins!
3 Jon [to a tree]: Come to Perkins!
4 Jon giggles
5 The trees groan and pull their roots out of the ground; they
advance on Jon threateningly... --lynn
6 lynn eyes herself warily.
7 Ray giggles
8 Ray nails a tree down.
9 Jon detonates a low yield nuclear device over a tree.
10 lynn shakes the trees.
11 Ray spraypaints ``WAKE UP'' on a tree in dayglo orange.
12 Ray giggles
13 Jon takes off and nukes a tree from orbit. ``It's the only way
to be sure.''
14 Ray [to a tree]: I will not support what I see as a flagrant runaway,
illegal and rogue decision here.

In line 6, I eyed myself warily because I just did the
strange spoof in the line above; impossible physical actions
like this one play a regular communicative role in the MOO.

Objects in MOO are often at ontological risk as much as
bodies are; abstractions like plans
or projects can become ``real'' objects which can be carried or
dropped like other objects. For instance, on JHM, plans for MOO
development are
embodied as MOO objects, making it possible for Tom to drop the
Appliances Project in a room. [Footnote: Note that I wanted to type
``drop the Appliances Project at someone's feet'' (there are no feet
to drop it at, strictly speaking) or ``drop the
Appliances Project on the floor''! Rooms exist programmatically,
but floors and feet do not.] Dropping an object in front of people is an action
that has some communicative force, usually meaning
``take a look at this'' or ``use this.''

In this paper I discussed the ways in which the simulation of the
body has become semi-``real" in virtual reality or even ``hyperreal"
(cf. Baudrillard 1983), and the status the virtual body has as
an element in a multi-party constructed discourse. The body
is intimately involved in the discourse of the MOOs I discussed.
It has become what Hayles (1993) called a ``flickering signifier''
of identity, changing its terms for comprehension and circumscription
regularly.

Immersive virtual reality has been claimed to be a radical new technology for
viewing the body and playing in cyberspace, shifting perceptions
and altering mental models (Walser 1990).
After a demonstration of an immersive virtual reality
system, several MUDders discussed the rhetoric around the idea of
``putting on bodies'' in immersive virtual reality. The experience of the
physical and experience of identity clearly change in an immersive
virtual reality setting, but the MUDders agreed
that they did not find this so different from a day in the MOO;
they thought of null emotes and Xythian-completion immediately: [Footnote:
Jay's second comment is a programming joke, intended ironically.
In the MOO, properties of objects are inherited from their parent
objects; changing a character's parent to an exit object would be
somewhat crippling, since the character would lose its
ability to communicate and move around.]

Jay once said something like ``xythian-completion is about exploring
alternate lifestyles''
Jay also said this about the joys of ``@chparent me to $exit'' though

Identity-shift, even to nonhuman or abstract discourse entities, is
commonplace in the course of playful conversation in a MUD. Even
in nonplayful conversation, the user is subjected to the split
identity of being physical and corporeal at a terminal, and being
an entity of code which can be manipulated by herself or other
characters. The self is constantly in question and open to redefinition
in such an environment, even through the narrow bandwidth of text.

I owe big debts to the
creative community at JHM for making this paper possible, especially
to Ken, Jay, Dave, Joe, and Tari. Special thanks to Erik Ostrom and Doug
Orleans for reading
the draft carefully and giving detailed comments, as well as Jeff Blaine.